Jane talks ChatGPT on TV

My (CBS) Sunday morning adventure

Greetings, all!

I keep promising that my next newsletter will be about something other than ChatGPT, but here I am again with more on ChatGPT. It seems like everywhere you turn right now, ChatGPT is the main story—and for good reason. We’re all going to have to figure out what this technology means for how we write and think—in school and at work.

This week I had the opportunity to chat with CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue for a segment that aired this morning—and for his podcast, Unsung Science. I had a great time talking with David Pogue about all things ChatGPT and teaching, but only a few snippets of our long conversation ended up in the segment. The piece didn’t focus as much on my main concerns and questions about ChatGPT as I had hoped—but they did a great job providing an overview of the issues.

CBS did include the part where I talked about writing as thinking—but not the part where I talked about what we lose if machines do that thinking for us. If you’re a regular newsletter reader, you may have read my thoughts about this before in this post and this post. There are so many ways that this technology may affect us, but as a writing teacher and a writer, I keep coming back to this question: If we figure out what we think by writing about it, what will happen to that thought process when ChatGPT is doing the writing? We need to understand what problems this technology can solve—but also what problems it is going to create for thinking and learning.

The Unsung Science episode takes a deeper dive into the many issues that ChatGPT raises. If you’re interested in the big picture—how generative AI works, what problems it may create due to bias and misinformation, it’s worth a listen. You can find the podcast episode, “AI and the End of Writing,” here.

And here’s the CBS segment:

More soon—including more writing tips that don’t involve ChatGPT!

Jane